Roundup: Executive Shakeup at HP

Between The Lines (Larry Dignan) - Among the moves, Livermore’s departure is probably the largest. Livermore has frequently been a CEO candidate, but never made the final cut. Throughout the CEO changes—Lew Platt, Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurd and Apotheker—Livermore continued to find key roles at HP. Livermore has been with HP for 29 years.

Bloomberg - The elevation of Donatelli, Zadak and Veghte could temporarily hamper Apotheker’s efforts to reignite growth as the company adjusts to the changes, ISI Group analyst Abhey Lamba said in a note to clients today. Many large customers that long dealt with Livermore will need to forge relationships with new executives, said Sterne Agee’s Wu. “Ann’s been a fixture,” he said.

InformationWeek - Mott had a huge impact on HP's IT operations after being hired by CEO Mark Hurd in 2005 to run IT with the kind of discipline and accountability that Hurd demanded of business executives. Mott transformed the HP IT operation through a massive consolidation and centralization effort. Under Mott, HP went from 86 data centers scattered around the world down to six global data centers through a three-year consolidation. Along with it, Mott brought new discipline to IT budgeting, forcing business units to do cost-benefit analysis for every IT project, regardless of size. That process yielded what Mott referred to as the "revenue of IT"--the benefits that IT projects, so that discussions didn't focus entirely on what IT costs.

The Register - HP is now looking for someone to run the Enterprise Services unit, which is basically EDS plus the professional services and outsourcing business that HP had built on its own prior to acquiring EDS for $13.9bn in May 2009. The Technology Services part of the Enterprise Business was moved over to HP's Enterprise Server, Storage and Networking group, and its general manager was made a direct report to Apotheker at the time.

CNET News - HP painted the moves as more closely in line with "its corporate structure with the strategy it announced in March." That was when Apotheker first laid out his vision for the company he joined last fall. He wants HP to focus on three areas: cloud services, connectivity among devices, and software.